Apricot Rosemary Ice Cream by elin o'Hara slavick
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
I don’t know how to write a poem
about apricot rosemary ice cream
and downs syndrome oysters.
They both melt on the tongue
with powerful differences.
One churned after being picked
and snipped by local fingers,
served on the edge of a cliff
in a cobblestone town
that stands the test of time –
thick houses shuttered,
an empty church on fire with light inside,
a pizza truck outside,
the fountains of clothes-washing water,
not to drink.
The other plucked from the sea,
shucked and served by my husband
with lemon wedges and explanations
of how everything comes to be.
I read in Bewilderment
about the four Buddhist immeasurables –
Be kind toward everything alive.
Stay level and steady.
Feel happy for any creature anywhere that is happy.
Remember that any suffering is also yours.
But I still step on large black ants
swarming around the saltwater pool,
running inside from the allergic bees,
easily exasperated by other people’s
obvious suffering.
The savory sweetness cooling
our hot August mouths.
Fruit and herb, cold cream.
The salty eye of a shelled soft lung
breathing to be eaten.
I always wanted to eat my mother.
elin o'Hara slavick is an interdisciplinary artist. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence andher MFA in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A Professor
at UNC, Chapel Hill for 27 years, she has held residencies in Canada, France,
Japan, Caltech and UC, Irvine. She has exhibited internationally, and is in many
collections, including Queens Museum, National Library of France, Library of
Congress, Nasher Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Slavick is the author
of two monographs - Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography and After
Hiroshima; Cameramouth - a collection of surrealist poetry; and Holding History
in Our Hand, commissioned for the 75th commemoration of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. She is the founder of SWANS: Slow War Against the Nuclear State, a
collective of artists. Her work has been featured in the New York, Tokyo, and LA
Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Asia-Pacific Journal, Women’s Studies Quarterly,
the Brooklyn Rail, Cultural Politics, Afterimage, among other publications.
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